What Happens When It Is Quiet

This move has given much time to think. The quietness of our cabin, the surrounding woods, the brook flowing through our backyard - it all draws me deeper into my thoughts than I have been in a long time. It seems so long since I really heard the breeze, really listened to the rain, really saw the sun.

I run the TV in the background so I don't go crazy in the quiet. Piper plays while I unpack, but she offers no intelligent input for my thoughts to center on. She wants to do what I am doing.

I think about the photo editing that I need to get back to next week. I wonder if we can scrape together enough to pay someone else to do it, then realize I really want to finish for my clients.

I think that I like the light of my lamps on the all-pine walls of the cabin. It's very cozy on rainy days. It's been very rainy ever since I found this place. I don't want to stay too long, because it is small and has its quirks, but it is nice to feel more settled. I am not stressed about Piper falling down the stairs here.

I think about Pete's passing the Bar - or not passing. I try to pray, to ask God to please let him pass, but I cannot get Him to give me a guarantee. I don't know if He wants him to pass. I don't know if that would be best for us, if maybe He has something else for us.

I wonder somewhat idly what having another baby would look like, if we could do a home birth here in this house, if I could love Piper and other children. I am reminded that I can speak of God when we rise up and when we sit down, when put them to bed, when we are wondering what life will bring. I can tell them who He is.

I realize that my life is not a scripted plot that has been lived before, that God is not a predictable, controllable author or a fairy godmother with a happy ending just for me. He saw all my days before I was born, and He sees me now where I am. He wants to give me good gifts as His child, and yet He is God and His ways are not my ways.

There is no answer for my questions but simply "trust." It is too simple, too hard.

Yet today, I wish for my Abba. I wish to crawl into His lap and ask Him to just hold me until my circumstances make sense to me again. I want to ask Him if it's really okay that I cling to Him, to His love, to His grace, to His mercy.

I have to cut the meat for dinner before Piper wakes from her nap. I need to unpack those last few pesky bathroom boxes and find a place to put things.

I play the piano and wonder about the words to songs I sang growing up, realizing that I disagree now with many of the concepts, hoping that is all right with God. I sang them so meaningfully then.

I know I am not alone here. His presence is near, palpable almost. I am afraid if I turn I will see Him standing there as He is, full of love and full of holiness and I will be unable to look Him in the eye because I have been afraid of Him.

I find that I am not who I thought I was, and I think about who I've wanted to be. I have no picture for my desired identity. I told someone the other day that if she never figures out what to do with her life, her life will be made up of the things she has lived. This is my life. It is what it is. I am where I am. I have dreams and hopes and fears. I have so much.

I think about the song I sang yesterday when I was puttering on the piano, from the Psalms - "With my mouth I will make known His faithfulness to all generations." I wonder if my blog counts as a "mouth." I know He is faithful to Himself. Faithful to me?

Well, He's here, isn't He?